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AJ will be holding seminars every other day at the Texas retreat. Following are my notes from the first part of Saturday’s session, which was about two hours long. After the break, AJ spoke for another hour and a half on addictions. I’ll post notes from that session sometime soon.

I found this to be a very powerful and triggering session. Some of the most triggering material for me was about the sleep state – not new material, but presented in a way that caused me to drop my denial about certain things that have been happening in my sleep state. So my notes on this section are very skimpy because I was not focused on taking notes.

I suggest that if you find these notes interesting and helpful at all, that you watch or listen to the sessions when they are available. Obviously my interests and injuries will have affected to some degree the accuracy of my notes, and it would be much better for you to hear Jesus’s actual words.

NOTES FROM SATURDAY’S SESSION

First, AJ read a quote from The Life Elysian (second paragraph of Chapter 3). It begins, “The surgeon who drives his scalpel deep.” AJ’s point was that he is going to be quite candid and truthful with us during this retreat, and we may perceive his truths to be painful. He said he isn’t trying to make our lives difficult, but to help us grow toward God.

He then asked us why we are here. Several people answered, and a lot of the responses were about a longing for truth. AJ said his and Mary’s spirit friends said that these are our actual reasons for being here:

1. Some are basically needy and need to have reassurance.
2. Some want someone to do all the work for them, they want hand-holding through decisions and feelings, and still have many New Age practices.
3. Some want personal time with Jesus and Mary. They feel their situations are special and that previously given general information doesn’t apply to them.
4. Some are people who desire others and themselves to shut down emotionally.
5. Some want to be told they are doing well, or they believe they are doing well and want positive feedback.
6. Some are under heavy spirit influence and have come to undermine the proceedings.
7. Some have come so they’ll be able to say “I was there when…” and brag or feel superior to others who weren’t here.
8. Some have a sincere desire to grow and want to use their time well.

AJ suggests that we work on deconstructing a lot of our stuff.

These are the same emotions that groups who come to seminars all over the world have.

AJ suggested we feel about our choices while we’re here, to value the opportunity here. He expressed thanks to Robin, Caroline, and Michael for their work in making this event happen.

QUESTION ABOUT SHAME

AJ said, this question is specifically about sexual shame in childhood, but shame comes from all sorts of sources in childhood.

In a situation of abuse, the adult tells itself it has nothing to be ashamed of. It blames the child for the shame. “You made me do this.” This creates openings in the child, so the child believes it has something to be ashamed of.

The shame is really the adult’s, although the child feels it. The adult refuses to own it and projects the shame onto the child. Although it is not our own shame, we still need to feel it. (We also need to feel the shame of anything we’ve done out of harmony with love. There is a Law of Compensation emotion.)

The refusal of the adult to acknowledge that it is doing a shameful thing is what causes the child to feel shame.

The feeling “I’m not lovable” is the measure of the adults’ poor treatment of you. This emotion is not true, and it is not even your own emotion. But you still need to feel it in order to release it.

When we tell ourselves the same thing (“I am not lovable”) – which is a lie – we prevent ourselves from feeling the real feeling (“I was told I am not lovable”). When we tell ourselves the lie, we just reinforce the belief. We do need to feel the feeling “I am not lovable” in order to release it. But do not reinforce it!

Shame is the feeling where you feel so bad about yourself that you believe everything that was done to you was your fault in some way. If you believe that, it is highly unlikely that you will feel it, because there would be no point – you believe it’s true.

QUESTION ABOUT SEXUAL PREDATORS

They are very sensitive to children’s emotions. The child would already have a feeling that anything that happens to it is their fault. This feeling is an attraction for the predator. The spirits with the predator tell him who is open. The predator knows the child won’t tell because the child will feel the event was its own fault.

BACK TO SHAME

For an adult, there are two causes of shame:

1. Someone else perpetrated shame on you as a child, and it’s still in you
2. Things you have done that you have shame about

We are temped to run away from our self-inflected shame once we hear what he just said!

The projection of blame in childhood can lead to terror.

QUESTION ABOUT SLEEP STATE

It’s rare for a person to be in a better condition in their sleep state than in their awake state.

(There was much more material about the sleep state than I wrote down – I believe much of the same information is covered in the Sleep State seminar.)

HOW OUR CONDITION DEGRADES

It starts with the parents’ collective condition, including their morality, ethics, sexuality, religious and political beliefs – all these affect their feelings and beliefs about sexuality.

Because of this kind of pre-conditioning, the average female believes the receipt of sexual projections is a measure of her femininity. If the projections include approval, she is open to them.

Women are expected to take responsibility for males’ sexual behavior, as in many religious belief systems.

The parents’ emotions enter the child in utero, and then the parents’ feelings and beliefs are enacted with the child after it is born. The parents treat the child according to their feelings and beliefs.

Some of these beliefs are seemingly positive but actually are negative. For instance, “I shouldn’t say something that makes another person angry, even if it’s true.”

So how do we address this situation, with regard to the degradation of our soul in childhood?

1) Know the truth. Build a desire to know the truth.
2) Face the truth.
3) Feel the truth.

Abuse victims often cut themselves off from their family, change their name, get depressed, don’t have children (or get post-natal depression if they do have children), become hypervigilant, and become manically busy – but they don’t ever deal with the feelings from childhood – shame, terror, fear, anger.

So those emotions are still in their soul, and they attract spirits who are like their parents. In the awake state we can keep people at bay and deny the presence of spirits, but in the sleep state there is no barrier to them.

Feeling that I am to blame shuts down my grief.

QUESTION ABOUT A PHYSICAL PROBLEM

(A woman’s whole left side is affected.)

A lot of our physical injuries arise from expectations and demands.

If you’re numb, you don’t want to feel.
There will be anger over having to feel what you don’t want to feel.

We often feel the ERROR (eg I’m not worthy). We need to RELEASE the error and FEEL the TRUTH.

Our parents taught us to do all these things rather than place the responsibility for our feelings where it belonged (on them). They taught us to do all these things to get their approval. So we would accept their treatment of us. There is a sense of “I deserved it.”

Feel the truth. Feel the pain of the erroneous beliefs, the pain of what happened in relation to God’s Truth. Feel the pain of the harm, whatever the source.

The only reason we fear our parents is to prevent our own feelings.

The only reason we fear anything is that we want to prevent our own feelings about it.

When you realize this – when you know you can cope with your own emotional response to anything – you will not fear any person.

The first question was about the money changers in the temple – someone asked AJ, “Were you angry?” He said no, and then described the situation at the temple and more about his first-century life. Later he also discussed reincarnation – that the usual understanding of it is not correct and does not happen – and how it actually worked when he and the rest of the fourteen returned to earth. I did not take notes on these particular topics because AJ has discussed them elsewhere.

The day also included a very moving conversation that AJ had with a young woman in the audience about her childhood and her current feelings about her childhood and her parents. I didn’t take notes on that, either.

There were two main topics that were discussed on Sunday that I did take notes on: passive aggressiveness in American society/anger in general, and denial with regard to the Law of Attraction – plus a little bit about desire and making changes in our lives.

Passive aggressiveness in American society

We (Americans) tend to use: sarcasm, criticism (building up the self and pulling down others), gossip, control and manipulation, a dismissive attitude, rudeness, political activity, sports, and pouting/the silent treatment, among others.

We refuse to allow ourselves to believe we’re angry.

We pander to angry people.

The actions/attitudes listed above release some of the pent-up rage, but it tends to build up over time. People get “grumpy” when they’re older because of all that built-up anger.

Often when people connect to their anger for the first time, they go berserk. In a group, a riot may ensue.

Most people believe they’ve resolved their anger. Very little self-reflection.

There can be a gender bias in our passive-aggressive behavior and attitudes.

Men do “guy” things (like fishing trips) because they have sadness about their relationship and want to be away from it.

Objectifying the opposite gender is an expression of rage.

Excluding a gender is all about anger.

When angry, many people become ultra selfish and self-absorbed, not being in tune with what is going on around them. Including, that we want what we want and everyone else be damned.

When we are angry:

1) We often plead ignorance about it.
– There is a lot of rage in “you can’t expect me to know how to be loving.”
– Ignorance is a choice we make.
– If we are ignorant it’s because generally we choose to ignore what’s really going on.
– Ignorance is close to denial. (The word ignorance comes from ignore.) It is not using our will, not being humble, and not wanting to know the truth. We could choose to no longer be ignorant.

2) We deny that we are angry.
– We don’t see the link between our emotion and its effect in ourselves and in the world.
– How much love comes out of us often determines what comes back to us.
– Sarcasm is a choice to deny. It is an angry action, very unloving.
– Denial sets us up for passive aggressive expression of our rage.

Most of us are just a smidge away from violence. That’s why we are often on tenterhooks with one another. We pander to each other’s rage.

Our anger is attracting what we read about in the newspaper, what happens in the news.
– If I got loving attention as a child only when I was sick or hurt, imagine how that would affect my attractions as an adult and also contribute to news events.

The Law of Attraction

… is a law of love.

Consider:
1) How others treat others and how I feel about it.
2) How others treat me and how I feel about it.
3) How I treat others and how I feel about it.
4) How I treat myself and how I feel about it.

We are willing to talk about #1 and #2 first, because we feel we are not at fault. We prefer them from a perspective of denial.

#3 is the one we least want to see. This is about repentance. #3 is how we cause the most damage to our soul generally. Along with #1 it causes the majority of the damage to our soul. Most of us believe #2 caused most of our soul damage.

Our parents created a fertile ground for us to be unloving to others – but we had the choice.

Most people look only at #2 with the Law of Attraction.

Our internal ethics are often flawed:
Anything good, we think “I attracted it.”
Anything painful, “Someone did it to me.”
When the truth of this is exposed, we get quiet because we don’t want to hear it.

What I’ve done to another: I must see the truth and repent.
What others have done to me: I must see the truth and forgive.

Until our heart is open to repentance and forgiveness, we will continue to be closed to Divine Love.

We will not have problems with spirit influence if we engage forgiveness and repentance.

Desire

There was a question about overeating. AJ said, to change the direction of desire, it may help to ask about the truth of the situation. When we’re not willing to feel the cause (face the truth), we will revert back to the old behavior.

Somewhere around a hundred people attended on Saturday. For most, this was their first time seeing AJ “live.” Some had only just encountered his teachings in the week prior, after having seen the flier for the seminar. There was a good balance between males and females. Mary was there but didn’t get in front of the group.

My notes definitely aren’t complete, and please read them with a little bit of skepticism as far as the errors I might have introduced in the process of scribbling and then transcribing them.

I’ll post my notes from Sunday soon!

NOTES FROM SATURDAY’S SEMINAR

AJ focused throughout the seminar on the five most important qualities of soul:
Faith
Will
Humility
Truth
Love
This is the order in which we must engage them, because each depends on the ones that precede it. Fear prevents engagement with all of these in a soul-based and passionate way.

We must learn to be self-reflective. This is an attribute of humility. Lack of self-reflection is a major problem in our progression.
Because of lack of self-reflection, we seek leaders, and this desire brings about cults, religions, politics, and economic conditions.
Also, when we lack self-reflection, we say to ourselves that everything is okay inside me. This leads to the feeling either that everything is okay in the world, too, or that my problems exist because the world is not okay. Systems of belief develop to support these feelings.

To be self-reflective means allowing ourselves to see ourselves as God sees us.

We have God’s Laws helping us to see everything about ourselves:

The Law of Attraction shows you what you are.

The Law of Cause and Effect shows you what you create.

The Law of Compensation shows you that you have done something out of harmony with love (so, you must develop a desire to know what it is).

Being self-reflective is part of being a self-responsible individual.

When I am considering action in a situation, I can consider it in terms of the five qualities of soul:
What would love want me to do?
What would truth demand?
What would humility lead to?
Would I sit and wait, or use my will in some direction?
What do I know (things I have faith in), that would inform my choice?

Fear suppresses will. You convince yourself you don’t have a desire when you really do!
By choosing not to feel our fear, we are choosing to suppress our will and desire.
How do you develop will? Through desire for a loving relationship with God and soul mate.

To choose to live in fear is an angry position.
We get lost in fear because we are refusing to act.
If we refuse any of the five soul qualities, we get lost in fear.
Refusal to act – not fear! – is the reason people stay in bad situations, etc.

Confusion and doubt are indications I am avoiding a fear. Hopelessness is a desire to avoid feeling fear – an angry choice also.

To act in the face of fears:
1) List your fears.
2) Do what you are afraid of.
3) Anger is your guide (also doubt, confusion, and hopelessness).
4) Take loving action.

Whatever is in our heart will motivate our will.

When we have a desire, we should do it! Only ask, is there any evidence that this choice is NOT loving? This is the only consideration that would make me pause from following my desires.

Prayer is the greatest expression of mankind’s will. The highest expression of will is the desire to receive God’s Love.

It is impossible to experience pleasure if you are shutting down your pain.

Jesus discussed the three selves, especially facade. The facade develops partly to avoid emotional and physical violence in childhood.

The deconstruction of the facade is an important problem. There are strong fear-based motivators to keep the facade: fears about others’ perceptions of us, often. Often it’s not our own inertia that stops us from growing but that everyone else wants to see the facade. Our parents wanted to see our facade. We respond to others’ demands and expectations, because we fear we won’t be loved if we don’t.

Last Saturday four people met at the Arizona Learning Center to plan and begin projects there. Enrique Garcia, Frank Mistretta, Robert Majors, and Robert’s friend Billy constructed the first of many planned fertility holes, surveyed the land, and came up with strategies they hope to work on in the near future. The projects they’d like to do include building a pavilion for classes, installing water tanks, building a cob oven and rocket stoves, and constructing a shower that’s heated by passing a coil through a compost heap.

The land is located about 20 minutes northeast of Seligman, AZ, off Route 66. The biggest city nearby is Kingman, AZ, and the center is about three hours from Las Vegas. Frank Mistretta owns the land.

Fertility holes or piles are intended to provide the basic needs of life for bacteria, fungus, microbes, soil-based creatures, plants, and above-ground and airborne creatures (primary recovery organisms), as a first step in creating a loving ecosystem. You can learn to make them (and other permaculture and living fertility projects) at the Kyabra Learning Center’s website (in the links at right) – look under Projects or Experiments.

Next month there will be another event at the learning center, to check the fertility pile and do more planning, and AJ and Mary may tour the land. If it’s not too cold, this might be an overnight camping trip. Or, people could stay in Seligman in order to get two days of work done. If you’d like to participate, contact Enrique on Facebook or by email.

I’m processing some emotions now so might not post as often as usual … I am aiming for a new post each day, but when I’m processing, or very busy in daily life, that might not happen. I am both very busy and processing now, but for whatever reason, I still feel a strong desire to tell the story of how a spirit who was overcloaking me for a long time moved on.

Lindsay is a spirit that was with me – overcloaking me, I guess – probably most of my life. I feel that she was protecting me from feelings and memories, starting when I was very young. I believe we had a strong rapport and were so similar in our personalities and injuries that I couldn’t tell the difference between her and myself.

I’ve always (as long as I can remember) had feelings of confusion about who I am, what I want, how I feel. Because my parents were very shut down emotionally, and I was very sensitive as a child and had a strong desire to please, I didn’t develop a great sense of self. So these feelings of not knowing myself were/are based in my injuries but also came from tons of spirit influence. I often also had a “marionette” feeling … hard to describe, but like I wasn’t controlling my own body. That makes a lot of sense now.

Over the past few years I’ve become more willing and desirous to feel my feelings. I feel that at the same time Lindsay was growing, too … like I said, she and I were probably so alike that she felt similar desires to know the truth and feel her feelings.

Last spring I had some conversations with my husband about earthbound spirits, mainly wondering, how can a person possibly not know they’re dead? We talked about why a spirit might not understand that, we tried to imagine how it would feel to be without a material body but not knowing why, and talked about the resistance and denial that a person might feel about the truth that they have passed. I feel now that these conversations came from Lindsay’s desire to know the truth and helped her understand that she had passed.

A few weeks later, I visited some family out of town and had a lot of time to myself to feel and process. When I was alone one day, I began to have terrible feelings of fear and confusion. They were like the feelings I’d had before of not knowing who I am, but they were much stronger, extremely distressing, and there was also something I hadn’t felt before – a suspicion and terror that I was not who I had always thought I was … that actually I might not be Patricia! That I might actually be a spirit who was overcloaking this body, and therefore I might be dead! It was extremely spooky and terrifying. But I felt strongly that this might be true, and I prayed and prayed about it.

A few days later I met David Kelso and mentioned all this to him. He said, “Oh yes … there is a spirit with you, and her name is Lindsay. Do you want to talk to her? You could channel her.”

I had never spoken to a spirit that way and was afraid to. But we sat down and I connected to her and suddenly was sobbing. We talked to her a little bit and David explained that I didn’t want to be protected anymore and wanted to feel my own feelings now. Lindsay said “I do too.” David connected her with some bright spirits and she went with them.

It so happened that some male spirits who were also hanging around me saw this happen, and they came immediately afterward and wanted help, too, so David spoke to them and helped them connect with bright spirits also.

After that it was much easier for me to feel my feelings, and I’ve made much more progress. I don’t have those weird feelings of not knowing who I am – I’m much more certain of my desires and longings, for one thing – and that marionette feeling is gone. I feel that Lindsay has made good progress too, although some of her processing has been very hard for her.

I hope this story might be helpful to other people (mortal and spirits) who desire to grow and be in truth.

This past weekend Jesus and Mary (AJ Miller and Mary Luck) spoke in Philadelphia. The audio and video will be online eventually, but Michael Bailey, who attended, was kind enough to post some of his notes on Facebook. I’m reposting his notes, because this is such valuable material. Many thanks, Michael!

From Michael:

It’s impossible to summarize a talk with so many gems! But I want to share some of Jesus’ comments on fear and emotional processing from his closing statements Sunday, Oct. 20, particularly because of their value to those who will see them in San Diego and Texas. Text is taken from informal recording made in audience. ~Mike Bailey

Jesus told the Philadelphia audience that he and Mary are trying to be more frank and honest about what is in us. If we are willing to know, and they feel this in us, they will try to share more truth, so we can confront what is going on inside ourselves.

He said that many people are going to be confronted and won’t want to come again. They’ve seen this happen in England and Greece. But it’s OK with him and Mary, as they are not trying to build a following. They are just interested in sharing truth. It is not their desire to feed the addictions of the people in their audiences.

He said, “The reality is, truth can be very confronting and it’s going to trigger a lot of your fears.”

[Personally, I (Mike) have had anxiety about what Jesus will say to me in Texas, because there’s plenty to confront in me! (Ya know??) But we had just heard Mary spend two hours detailing how Jesus exemplifies divine love and how she responded to the intensity of living with him for these past six years, and Jesus had just given us a cool strategy for dealing with our fears, which I will summarize at the end of this note. And so I felt confident Sunday rather than afraid. He understands, and doesn’t judge us. He said that when confronted by truth, we will either rebel or accept it. He wants to help us to accept it, and he gave the following suggestions.]

“What I encourage you to do, particularly those of you considering coming to Texas, is to come with a very open heart and be willing to listen to some of the feedback that we give. You’re going to find a lot of the things we say quite confronting … and not everyone’s going to be very happy.

“So allow that process to continue. If you feel anger, feel the anger. If you feel like rebelling, feel the rebellion. Don’t avoid the feelings that are involved in the process of hearing truth. Because if you avoid the feelings, no progress can actually occur.

“So what I’d encourage you to do is, feel the feelings rather than avoid the situations.”

And Mary said, “Embrace whatever opportunity you have to receive truths, to see yourself. Totally embrace those things, and then just be humble to what you feel in those situations.” She had done this in her relationship with Jesus and she said she’s changed from being a hard, angry, rebellious woman to a person who is not only softer, but now has a desire for truth.

Jesus continued:

“This is what we need to be aware: There will be addictions inside of you that you do not want to address, and … what you choose to do with that is going to cause you to either rebel or go into acceptance and go through some emotions.

“What I’d encourage you to do is, when you feel that feeling of rebellion, start to see it as just a feeling of rebellion, rather than something I did (to you). … I’m not trying to harm you here, what I’m trying to do is help you become more loving and truthful and have a much happier life. That’s all I’m trying to do. I know very firmly that I know the way that that can happen, because I’ve personally experienced that way. And what I’m encouraging you to do is follow the same way, the same method, if you like. I’m not encouraging you to follow me — I don’t need you to do what we do, but I do wish (that) in a year’s time … I’d love to see a happier group of people who feel more love for each other, feel more love for God, feel that their lives have changed, feel like their situation has improved, feel like they have less fears.

“How that happens is completely up to yourselves. I have very little to do with it, aside from sharing some truth with you. The rest of the work is completely up to you.

“What I encourage you to do is to do the work, rather than just as soon as you get something confronted, run away.”

And in closing, Jesus and Mary thanked the Philadelphia audience for its openness and desire to discover more truths. “We would definitely enjoy seeing you guys again.” He did note there were just a few times when we shut down emotionally. One of the times was when we were discussing personal responsibility. “There was a heavy shutdown at that point, which shows that many of you don’t want to take personal responsibility,” he said.

[NOTE: The preceding text condenses 16 minutes of closing remarks, so be sure to listen to the official Divine Truth recording when it’s released to get the full story. The following text summarizes 11 minutes just before the closing remarks, with some paraphrasing.]

Jesus was presenting his strategy for dealing with fear. On the white board, he drew a scale of our emotions. The vertical axis was level of fear associated with any emotion and the horizontal axis was length of time before we process the emotion. The plotted line rose at a 45-degree angle, indicating that minor fears take little time to process and major fears take much time to process.

Jesus said that most people tackle minor fears first, leaving big fears for later. He encourages us instead to actively deal with the emotion that we currently identify as our largest fear right now, because releasing it would change many aspects of our lives straightaway.

(Mary said, with regard to addictions, if you’re wondering which is the most important one to start with, go with the one that is the most scary to challenge. That’s the rapid way to grow.)

Jesus said:

“If you can find the fear that is the largest one that you’ve identified, and instead of dealing with it in two years’ or 10 years’ time, or wait for the Law of Attraction to create some events that make you deal with it, bring it forward and do it now.

“What will happen is your life will significantly change very rapidly. You will rapidly speed up your own progression by focusing on the largest fear that you know of. (There are fears you don’t know of that are even greater.) You will speed up your progression so rapidly, that your whole life will change rapidly as a result. It will give you control over how fast you progress. The people who progress most slowly are those who choose to deal with their smallest fears first, and it’s only when they ‘feel ready,’ as they say, that they deal with the next fear.

“If you know you have a fear, bring that fear forward to now, feel through it, work on it, put some effort into doing the work on it, and let yourself feel it, because that will cause so much healing of your life and also create so much joy. Once those biggest fears go, desires of all kinds start coming out of you that you never knew you had before.

“So do it now. Don’t wait for events to catch up with you. Deal with the fear that has the biggest potential positive effect on your life.

“If we address the fears that dominate our lives first, the little fears will feel like nothings. … The people who deal with their big fears first, progress more rapidly, they become happier faster, they enjoy more of God’s love as a result if they long for it, and their life changes more rapidly. You can meet them one year and again the next year, and their whole life is different.

“The psychology of fear is, these big fears are the ones that we spend our whole lives trying to prevent. So I suggest that if your life is not changing rapidly, things aren’t improving rapidly, relationships aren’t improving rapidly, it’s because you want to do the gradual little things, the little fear that you can manage every time. Once you do these big things, process through them, you can see logically it will have a huge impact on your life in so many areas.

“What I like about dealing with these big ones, too, is they affect your life in so many areas, and once removed, your life will improve in almost every area; but these little fears usually only affect your life on one area. So if you remove them, it’s only that one area that changes. It still needs to be removed, too, but once you have faced and felt this (large) fear, how easy will it be to deal with this (small) one. It will be like a molehill in comparison, and that’s what it will feel like in comparison to these large ones.

“What I’ve done with my fears is, I list them in order of how big they are inside of myself and I focus on the biggest ones first, because I find that if I don’t, my life will change very slowly. I don’t know about you, but I like my life changing rapidly.

“Understand that obviously, whenever we have opposing feelings occurring within us, we have certain fears and certain addictions in play, and don’t be surprised if some of the things you think are good about yourself actually have a lot of addictions in them, and don’t be surprised if some of the things you think are bad about yourself actually also have a lot of purity in them.

“In the end, that’s the kind of thing God will show you through the process.”

Soon I’ll be posting about the learning centers in Cushnie (AUS) and Arizona (USA) – both have just held events. And I’ll be posting one of my favorite vegan kale recipes, as soon as I can get a good picture! I’ve got plans to tell you about some fascinating books on nature, and I’ll start a series called “People in their Passion.” (I’m loving writing this blog!)

While I get those pieces together – although I know poetry doesn’t appeal to everyone! – I will leave you with Rumi.

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world,
who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can’t be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, “Why did you come
so quickly?” He or she would say, “Because I heard
your helplessness.”

Where lowland is,
that’s where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don’t just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music. . . .

Give your weakness
to One Who Helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she’s there.

God created the child, that is, your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don’t be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of Loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

— Jelaluddin Rumi in Mathnawi II,
translated by Coleman Barks

(Rumi was a poet in 13th-century Persia. His works are considered by some to be among the greatest mystical poetry.)